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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#181

Post by [deleted] »

pgwhalen wrote: post #148
jml7c5 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of division over political correctness, but I would not suggest that it is the cause , any more than a cough is the cause of a cold. There is something that is driving us apart on many, many issues, and political correctness just happens to be one of the more prominent ones. And HN is pretty friendly to discussion of big-media-tech censorship in general. It's when a post veers too far into conspiracy o…

> There is something that is driving us apart I must say I am too curious not to ask, this quite cryptic. What would you say is driving us apart?

[deleted]

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#182

Post by setgree »

tptacek wrote: post #13
echelon wrote: post #6

We're literally tearing ourselves apart, and I don't want to hold opinions about human beings anymore. Anyone can be an enemy or dislike you. Social media has rotted us from within and from all sides. Left, right, it doesn't matter. Everyone is so hostile and eager to end other people. This is madness. Yes, I did read the article. We're cancelling people over criticism . Somebody needs to hide Linus. I don't like cri…

This conference isn't a good example, but it is totally reasonable to run an event or a space with a norm of avoiding criticism. That's part of the job of a code of conduct: to establish those norms . Here, the norms were surprising (a back-and-forth between two presentations is a perennial seat-filler at tech conferences) and poorly communicated. That's a problem. But "banning criticism" isn't necessarily a problem.…

It might be reasonable to have that norm, but the context here is a response to Joel Grus's "I don't like Jupyter Notebooks" which was both well-received and quite critical. Not of any particular person, but of technology, but personally I don't see how Jeremy Howard's talk was very different.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#183

Post by btilly »

robbyoconnor wrote: post #101

I support codes of conduct but this is EXACTLY the thing that opponents point to when they oppose them. I expected this post to be a rant against codes of conduct and instead it wound up leaving me wondering if NumFOCUS and JupyterCon was in the wrong here...this guy offered criticism and that is NOT a fucking violation of ANY CoC -- if you can't handle criticism, don't make public statements. The hilarious is that J…

I support codes of conduct but this is EXACTLY the thing that opponents point to when they oppose them.

Why don't you come to to the dark side and oppose codes of conduct then?

I consider the purported goals of codes of conduct to be laudable. But this kind of thing becomes inevitable when SJWs aka political correctness police get power through trying to enforce codes of conduct.

It isn't that sometimes proponents of CoCs are their own worst enemies. It is that there are people seeking power through CoCs who are honestly bad actors. And we shouldn't be putting people we can't trust into a position to control the speech of others.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#184

Post by newscracker »

After reading the entire post, I feel really bad for him, and I hope he gets the time off and the support necessary to recover from this incident. I also feel quite angry with how he has been treated. So please let me vent it out here as politely as I’m able to.

I can imagine something like this or worse happening on social media groups, but an ostentatious “committee” that listens only to one side and never gives the other side the chance to get details on how things were perceived or why it’s a violation? And the chuckling in the call when someone has already said they’re not in a proper emotional state is just bullying.

I personally don’t think CoC or any other set of laws can be written to be precise and comprehensive. There will always be edge cases that need many hearings and re-hearings, with some discretion based on past precedence, nuances, etc., in the interpretation of written words in the code in an effort to make the code clearer for the future (this is how we improve laws, don’t we?).

This committee has, IMNSHO, been the opposite of kind and doesn’t deserve to hold the responsibility of handling CoC enforcement or violations. I’m sure this committee is not even capable of explaining clearly to a potential speaker what the CoC really means as per the written words and what’s expected.

This CoC needs to be torn apart and rebuilt, and the people in this particular committee must be sent to other areas where their expertise can be best used. Their proper place is certainly not in a CoC committee, for sure.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#185

Post by marcinzm »

ben0x539 wrote: post #174
strken wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in new projects from now on I'll start running echo "Don't be a dickhead, or I'll block you from the repo until you stop." > CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md Not needlessly aggressive, gets the point across, short, covers everything someone could do wrong, provides consequences and a pathway to reconciliation.

It doesn't communicate what you consider to be dickhead behavior, so it invites fear, uncertainty and doubt both in whether my behavior is okay, and in what behavior of other participants I can expect to be "protected" from.

Codifying all expected social norms among an arbitrarily diverse group of people in a concise but fully understandable form is impossible. Attempts to do so just leave loopholes, edge cases and personal interpretations the size of jumbo jets which will be abused. This doesn't try to do so and leaves it up to you to observe the social norms of the group. Like has been done by humans since the dawn of our species.

edit: A false sense of security if not actually security as the author of this article found out.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#188

Post by jhgb »

bww wrote: post #166

This guy apparently offended some fellow presenter at a conference. Then he wrote an article about how he is offended by being accused of offending this person. Is this whole thing starting to seem ridiculous to anyone else?

Anyone can claim offense at no cost. Hence the accusation being a joke. That complaint was perfectly legitimate.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#189

Post by svrb »

obviouslynotme wrote: post #131
762236 wrote: post #49

I stopped reading when he said he's fine with cancel culture: since what is referred to as “cancellation” is often just “facing consequences” . No, cancel culture is bullying. Edit: I feel that the author was bullied, or mistreated, so I was primed to be upset when seeing his own dismissal of cancel culture.

That is because he is a real person using his real name. He might have believed in this nonsense and is only now seeing CoCs for what they really are. He might not be comfortable publicly rebelling against the new orthodoxy. These tribunals are no joke.

Or we can take the author at his word and understand that he is part of the problem. He's still in favor of CoCs after all this, and the only example we have of a CoC he isn't in favor of is one which got applied to him... in the same way CoCs are always applied.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#190

Post by ben0x539 »

friendlybus wrote: post #28

Using CoC's to backstab people is not going to end well. Using CoC's to institute a heirarchy of 'who can criticize who' is going to be rebelled against. Some people are power hungry and use words to get power. They are exposing themselves in the silliest ways. Pure vanity.

I'm not familiar with the people involved, what's the hierarchy in this incident?
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